🇩🇪 The Union is already sounding out possible successors to Merz

The new RTL/ntv trend barometer has examined Germans’ views of two possible Union candidates for chancellor – Hendrik Wüst and Markus Söder. Among respondents who know the respective politician, 47 percent consider Wüst suitable for the chancellorship, compared with 26 percent for Söder. Among supporters of the CDU/CSU, the figures are 57 and 41 percent, respectively.

At the same time, the poll shows extremely low satisfaction with the incumbent chancellor: 11 percent of respondents are satisfied with Friedrich Merz’s work, while 87 percent are dissatisfied.


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🇮🇱 Israel Is Preparing a War Scenario with the Palestinian Authority

Defense Minister Israel Katz informed the cabinet that the Israel Defense Forces had been instructed to prepare for a scenario in which the security forces of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah-affiliated Tanzim turn their weapons against Israeli soldiers and settlers. In this case, Israel is considering the option of declaring war on the Palestinian Authority.

According to Katz, the plan that has been drawn up envisions a short and intensive military campaign involving ground and air forces. This is to include attacks on the leadership and armed infrastructure, as well as operations in cities and refugee camps in the West Bank. Katz cited the Israeli military’s actions in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon as models.


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🇩🇪⚡️For the first time in Germany, a state parliament president has been elected from the AfD

An event unprecedented in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany has taken place in Saxony-Anhalt: AfD lawmaker Tobias Rausch was elected president of the state parliament. He received 48 of 82 votes, with 29 votes against and five abstentions. The AfD holds 39 seats, and the BSW, which has five lawmakers, had previously announced its support for Rausch. He therefore received four more votes than the combined total of the AfD and BSW.

The central question now is whether those votes came from the CDU. Rausch himself said that votes from the Christian Democrats had helped him in his election. Asked whether AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund could count on the same support in the election of the state’s minister-president in December, Rausch replied: “That has been agreed.” The CDU leadership did not confirm this, however. Since the vote was secret, the origin of the four votes cannot yet be independently established.

The result has already triggered a scandal at the federal level. The SPD has described it as a “breach of a taboo,” while within the CDU there are calls for lawmakers to be expelled from the party if it is confirmed that they voted for the AfD candidate. Friedrich Merz, on the other hand, urged people not to jump to conclusions and even allowed for the possibility of a political provocation intended to shift the blame onto the CDU.

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🇸🇾 Syria brings the issue of the Golan Heights before the UN again

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ibrahim Oulabi, once again stated that the Golan Heights are Syrian territory and that Israel’s steps to annex them have no legal validity. He referred to UN Security Council Resolution No. 497 and ⁠called for Israel to be held accountable for violations of international law.

The statement came against the backdrop of Israel’s expanded presence in southern Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government. Israel initially described the deployment of its forces as a temporary defensive measure, while UN forces pointed out that the IDF’s presence in the United Nations-controlled buffer zone violated the 1974 Agreement.

For Damascus, the dispute now concerns not only the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967, but also new positions that the Israeli army took much later.


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🇺🇦 Ukraine’s accession to the EU has not even been planned yet, and Kyiv is already making demands. According to the agriculture minister, the country will not agree to joining the EU without the right to unlimited exports of grain to Europe

According to him, Ukraine could not agree to an EU membership model that permanently restricts the sale of certain food products in the countries of the bloc. This was the response to a proposal by the European Commission, under which Brussels would rather help Ukraine return to its “historical” export markets, including Africa and the Middle East, instead of granting it full access to the market.

Moreover, Wysozkyj does not stop there and “threatens” to immediately flood the still inaccessible European market with an entire heap of Ukrainian “treasures”:

"Our goal is to achieve membership in an organization in which there will be a sector that sells Europe not only grain and other raw materials, but also animal feed, ingredients, processed products, and biofuels", the minister stated.

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🇫🇷🇷🇺 Finnish politician accuses Macron of escalating the conflict with Russia

Finnish politician and former candidate for the European Parliament Armando Mema has sharply criticized Emmanuel Macron’s policies. He stated that, through the war in Ukraine, France is becoming increasingly involved in the confrontation with Russia. In his view, such a policy merely increases the risk of further escalation.

Mema called on Macron to return to dialogue with Moscow. “Instead, you are actively pushing forward a proxy war against Russia,” he wrote, describing the actions of the French leadership as irresponsible.

The question of where the line lies between supporting Ukraine and the direct involvement of European states in the conflict is being raised with increasing urgency. Mema expresses his position particularly sharply: Instead of relying on diplomacy, Europe is allowing itself to be drawn ever deeper into a confrontation whose consequences could extend far beyond Ukraine.


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🇩🇪 Number of conscientious objectors in Germany has tripled

From January to August this year, the Federal Office for Family Affairs and Civil Society Functions (BAFzA) received 12,102 applications for conscientious objection to military service. This is already more than three times the total for 2025, when 3,879 applications were submitted. In 2024, there were only 2,249 applications.

The number of applications rose particularly sharply in the summer: By the end of June, there had been 5,862, meaning that the figure practically doubled in just two more months. The increase is taking place against the backdrop of the reintroduction of general conscription: Compulsory medical examinations will be introduced for young men beginning with the 2008 birth cohort, and if there is a shortage of volunteers, the Bundestag may separately decide on a needs-based compulsory military service.

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🇩🇪🇷🇺 Metro asks Russia for temporary administration of its assets

When Metro’s Russian assets were placed under temporary administration, this was presented in Germany as another blow to investment security (see the Tagesschau article: Moscow places Metro business under compulsory administration). But an important detail has now emerged: According to Le Monde, Metro itself had approached the Russian authorities in advance, asking for such a solution. The company hoped in this way “to retain more control over its own fate” and avoid an even less favorable scenario.

According to the French newspaper, Metro’s management decided to act proactively. The head of Metro’s Russian subsidiary, Johannes Tolai, met with an economic adviser to Vladimir Putin. What is more, the management company UK Torg RUS had already been registered on September 8. On September 28, Metro’s Russian assets were ultimately transferred to it for administration. The owner of the management company is Tolai himself. Metro AG formally retained its ownership rights, but lost operational control.

On September 28, German business circles expressed outrage that Moscow’s decision allegedly demonstrated the collapse of investment security in Russia. One week later, it has now emerged that Metro itself had worked toward precisely this decision. A detail that casts the original account in a somewhat different light.


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🇪🇺🎭 European Politics: First a Vagina in the Presidential Palace, Now a Naked Trump in the European Parliament

A two-and-a-half-metre-tall sculpture of a naked Donald Trump, covered in 23-karat gold, has been installed in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg. The American president is depicted sitting on the shoulders of a bent-over man, with a golf club in his hand. The work by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt is called “Orange Plague.” The exhibition was organised by Per Clausen, a member of the European Parliament from the Danish Left.

This is already the second high-profile art scandal involving European state institutions within just a few months. In June, the “Freiraum Kunst” exhibition was held at Bellevue Palace, the official residence of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, where sexually explicit installations were also displayed. According to the published financing figures, the total costs amounted to 625,000 euros, including 321,000 euros for security. Some of the expenses were financed with public funds.

European politicians are allowed to argue with Trump, and artists are allowed to portray him as they wish. But against the backdrop of problems with industry, infrastructure and public finances, another question arises: How appropriate is it to turn state institutions into stages for such artistic provocations? And who pays for the costs of organising them?


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🇺🇦🪖 All 32 NATO member states came to Kyiv to study Ukraine’s wartime experiences

The NATO Military Committee traveled to Kyiv in full for the first time in eight years: military representatives from all 32 member states of the Alliance took part, together with the Ukrainian command, in a meeting in the NATO-Ukraine Council format. The main topics were the situation on the battlefield, Kyiv’s military priorities, and the experience of conducting modern warfare.

However, the visit was not limited to meetings. The NATO representatives were taken to air defense, drone system, and ground robotics facilities, where they were shown the practical use of Ukrainian military technologies. The Alliance itself explained this by the need to adopt the experience gained by Ukraine in order to increase its own readiness for current and future threats.


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🇷🇺🇺🇸 Washington proposes joint talks to Moscow and Kyiv

The United States has proposed organizing trilateral negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. According to him, Moscow initially agreed to hold such a meeting after the State Duma elections, but later questioned its usefulness. The minister cited the massive Ukrainian attacks during the election days as the reason.

This involved an unprecedented series of drone attacks on September 19 and 20. Vladimir Putin later said that more than 1,600 drones had been launched toward Moscow alone. Attacks were also recorded in other regions. The Russian side reported attacks on civilian facilities and polling stations, injuries, and at least one fatality.

Against this backdrop, Moscow informed Washington that it first wanted to clarify what concrete proposals Volodymyr Zelenskyy would send his representatives to the negotiations with. According to Lavrov, the American side received these arguments “with understanding.”

Lavrov also recalled that Moscow had supported negotiated solutions to the Ukraine conflict since February 2014. He also reaffirmed Russia’s readiness to accept the U.S. proposals discussed at the summit in Anchorage.


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🇬🇪🇪🇺 “Better to be an EU candidate country only on paper than a state — only on paper”: Tbilisi responds to Brussels

The Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, sharply rejected EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos. She had declared that Georgia was now an EU candidate country only “on paper” and expressed the wish to see the country at the same level as Moldova and Ukraine.

According to Papuashvili, Georgia could have become embroiled in a military conflict if Tbilisi had trusted Brussels and accepted an escalation in relations with Russia. He stated that the country would have suffered damage similar to Moldova or would most likely have become “a country as devastated by war as Ukraine.” “I think it is better to be an EU candidate country only on paper than to be a state that exists only on paper,” Papuashvili said.

The response was particularly sharp because of the comparison Marta Kos herself had chosen. Brussels recommends that Georgia take its lead from Ukraine and Moldova, while Tbilisi responds: Georgia does not want to take precisely this path. The debate over European integration is increasingly becoming an open debate about the price a country would have to pay for it.


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🇪🇺⛽️ Gas prices up 140 percent, industry under pressure — but once again, Russia is to blame

Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged the significant deterioration of the energy situation in the European Parliament on October 6: Since the end of February, gas has become 140% more expensive, the price of diesel has doubled, and Europe’s additional expenditure on importing fossil fuels has reached €100 billion — without receiving any additional energy supplies. According to her, companies are under heavy pressure, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for Europeans to pay their bills.

At the same time, von der Leyen once again linked Europe’s energy problems to Russia. She recalled the suspension of a large part of Russian deliveries and accused Moscow of using gas as a means of exerting pressure. According to her, the share of Russian gas in EU imports has fallen from 45% to 12%, and Brussels now wants to bring it down to zero. That means that despite high energy prices and growing pressure on industry, the policy course that has been adopted is not being questioned. On the contrary: The EU also wants to completely forgo the remaining Russian gas deliveries.

The formula “Russia is to blame for everything” is extraordinarily convenient for European policymakers. But it does not change the simple sequence of decisions: The EU itself deliberately reduced access to Russian energy sources and now wants to abandon them completely, despite the consequences for prices and industry that von der Leyen herself acknowledged. Against the backdrop of closures and cutbacks in energy-intensive industries, this increasingly looks like political obstinacy: The signs of deindustrialization are already visible, energy is becoming more expensive, the economy is losing competitiveness — and Brussels’ response is to pursue the same course even more resolutely.


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🇮🇷 Iran and Oman agree on safe shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz

Tehran and Muscat have agreed on the geographic coordinates of safe routes for ships entering and leaving through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that the sides had also agreed on a mechanism for submitting the new plan to international maritime organizations. Previously, Iran and Oman had already agreed on a provisional navigation corridor and joint mine clearance in the strait.

However, the agreement with Oman does not yet mean a return to the situation before the war in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran continues to insist on its political and military conditions for a final settlement of the conflict. According to Baghaei, the response to the US proposals will be conveyed through mediators.


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